Yet, the impression that all children feel a connection with the earth is, at best, a romantic idealization of childhood. It is easy to find children who don't feel "at home" on the planet. I know a child who would rather shovel snow in his sneakers, just to "get it over with," than dress warmly and take delight in a winter's day. This same child once told me, "the fewer trees, the better," because to him it meant fewer leaves to rake!
Why are some children at home in the natural world while others are afraid of any tree taller than a fire hydrant? I think it has to do with the idea of relationship and connection with nature. We think of relationships as exclusively mutual acts between people We love, or learn to love, the people who surround us because we have developed a relationship with them. Yet, children who have never had occasion to develop a bond with another life form, plant or animal, may spend their entire lives sharing the earth with strangers rather than friends.
For those children living in overly manicured suburban neighborhoods, where over-fertilized grass looks more like a living room carpet, where dandelions are only a nuisance and every bug is exterminated, green things mean work. If a child who dreads the physical labor of raking leaves has no affirmative natural encounters to balance out his dread, he may grow up and fill his front yard with rocks. When the Discovery Channel becomes the norm for a child's experience with the natural world, she will become more familiar with scenes of ratings-driven animal violence than the snowy tracks of gray squirrels in the backyard.
Does it matter whether or not a child is scared of anything wilder than a rose? Does it make a difference whether or not a child knows more about the hunting behavior of Bengal tigers than building forts and secret hiding places? Does it matter if plants are too boring to tend to? Children who live life on the surface, disconnected and disengaged, are not at home on the earth as they should, need, or perhaps, would like to be. They suffer from an inimical brand of homelessness. They need opportunities to connect anew to the earth and to the silent fertile ground within themselves.
May this short journal serve as a catalyst for your own reflection about connection and relationship with the life forms that surround you.
[This article is reprinted by permission from the first issue of Connections, Project Nature's quarterly journal. Each issue will contain stories, articles, book reviews, poetry and artwork centered around a specific theme, as well as information about Project Nature's events and educational programming. The editors of Connections welcome submissions, responses and ongoing dialogue concerning the works we present. A Child's Sense of Place seems a logical place to begin, given PN's primary goal of helping children and adults develop a sense of relationship with the earth. In this issue, we hear voices of both children and adults convey a sense of connection with the earth through events that shaped their lives. Their personal stories become brief journeys in which we are all invited to become fellow travelers.]
You can visit Project Nature and learn more about Mary Doane's work.